Keep in mind when most people were first doing it at the beginning of this tier they were anywhere from 470-490. A lot of people had to pull out crazy tricks to survive.

Fast forward to 5.4 with new gear and item upgrades, among other things...I would imagine the average LFR hero would have at least a 505-510 ilevel going into the patch. While this gateway change will technically make the fight more difficult, the increase in item levels will make the fight significantly easier. Maybe instead of being a skill check it will be more of a gear check. Either way, I think we also need to keep in mind that most of us that wanted green fire have it, or have access to getting it before this change is implemented. Some of us aren't allowed to use green fire in raids. This may come across as elitist, but I don't mean for it to be, however I think its a good thing that something such as green fire is reserved to people who have put a significant amount of time into their warlock.

Some people used the portals to cheese Chaos Bolt. If you kept 100% uptime on the gateway debuff, you never got chaos bolted. Period.

Off topic: Oh no, Kanrethad got banned.

Not sure if they have fixed it already, but when I did him and had the pit lord tank him, he completely stopped casting chaos bolt.
Aside from that, the fight is tuned around ilvl 500, with the gear you can get in 5.4 the fight should be a joke if you are somewhat decent.

Hah I must be a rubbish warlock then, I have trouble keeping all the keys in places i can find them/use them.

As for the change to the Gateway, it certainly seems like too dramatic of a change to make to live I think. They will probably test it out at a few different levels before settling on a final debuff time.

PVP locks can't get away from any melee on their own. Gateway (and some of us have been warning blizz against it since MoP beta ahem) is just so impossible to balance for lock vs team/raid, pve vs pvp, that its just going to end up being nerfed to such junk that its not any fun to use. In pvp having a longer debuff for the team is very reasonable. In pve it will make locks less of big deal which is fine but some strats will need a change, accept RNG deaths/wipes, or mechanics get a tweak to not go on the same people repeatedly (eg helm of command, ice trails, etc). I'm pretty sure the shadowbolts in heroic consorts work like that already so it wouldn't be hard for blizz to do. (xyz dangerous raid mechanic prefers players it hasn't targeted that fight before....) PVP locks are going to need quite a bit of help vs melee.

Green fire was doable without the gateway thing before, it just means you didn't have to LoS his CB. Also makes warbringer farming marginally easier but again not the make/break. However now even new players doing the quest are going to have a far higher ilvl than what was common when green fire first came out. Your pvp craftables/honor gear, LFR gear, etc are all higher ilvl than what was common so its going to be significantly nerfed or allow for a mistake without it being lethal.

PVP locks can't get away from any melee on their own. Gateway (and some of us have been warning blizz against it since MoP beta ahem) is just so impossible to balance for lock vs team/raid, pve vs pvp, that its just going to end up being nerfed to such junk that its not any fun to use. In pvp having a longer debuff for the team is very reasonable. In pve it will make locks less of big deal which is fine but some strats will need a change, accept RNG deaths/wipes, or mechanics get a tweak to not go on the same people repeatedly (eg helm of command, ice trails, etc). I'm pretty sure the shadowbolts in heroic consorts work like that already so it wouldn't be hard for blizz to do. (xyz dangerous raid mechanic prefers players it hasn't targeted that fight before....) PVP locks are going to need quite a bit of help vs melee.

Warlocks will be just fine in PvP with the nerf to the gate. You still have your own personal teleport with Demonic Circle every 30 seconds which can be used through line of sight barriers and clears your snares on use. All the tier 2 talents for warlocks are effective for getting melee off of them: howl of terror shining above the rest and shadowfury not too far behind. Sacrifical Pact and Dark Bargain are useful for when a melee is stuck to you like glue and you just need a few moments for support from your team, or for your teleport or tier 2 talents to come off cooldown. All warlocks of course still have Fear to use, which they can cast off of a Shadowburn or any time they are confident their target can't interrupt the cast. Going demonology and using a Felguard for it's stun gives you even more room to work with.

Yeah this is not much about the green fire anymore since the gear will work as a nerf... but so many people have become accommodated to using our gate in order to survive certain mechanics in fights like Lei Shen, Qon, Animus, Hydra, Ji-Kun and even heroic Jin'rokh that it will hurt how some people do in fights.
I know we'll have to go on with the debuff and I'm sure at one point we'll be okay but raiders have become so used to having this gate in order to get from point A to point B and not die.
The new CD to use the gate is kinda long though and I don't agree with it :|

Originally Posted by darkminaz

there are people worried about the green fire boss? srsly?

lei shen hc/animus hc/hydra hc are the 3 main concerns i have with this change

Green fire boss with ilvl 540 is like kicking a baby and stealing his candy .. to damn easy :P
I think it's kinda sad that they never did add a itemscale like hero szenarios, but whatever.

with the baseline -10% less dmg inc, life leech nerf, gateway nerf well i'm not to sure i will survive the faceroll cleave combos but i'm to lazy for real pvp (above 2k) anyway

I'm sure you never wiped and killed him with no gear while playing with one hand and solving a Rubik Cube at the same time.

Infracted for trolling.

Im not saying i didnt wipe, their are clearly still mechanics that you have to learn to deal with. However using a gateway did not make the encounter significantly easier in any regard. Go be mad somewhere else.

---------- Post added 2013-06-22 at 10:37 PM ----------

[QUOTE=helic;21542023]

Originally Posted by pixul

considering you can kill him before the 2nd wave of fel puppies in 470ish ilvl gear, the fight was never dramatically hard, to be quite honest.

When I did it in ilvl470 it took me to the 3rd imp spawn, I used rain of fire to generate massive embers and just spam shadowburn into him and killed him with about 3 seconds left on the dot.

I played extremely aggressive before the first imp wave, as i learned he was either bugged, or just didnt actually cast cataclysm until AFTER the first wave of imps, so i would pre-cast a chaosbolt, charge him ( on cooldown ), and turret 2-3 chaosbolts into him with every charge. This put him at about 60-65% hp by time he was spawning the first wave of imps, and i was dealing 15-20% more dmg to him per "add wave". ( Killed him between the 2nd imp wave and 2nd fel puppy wave. )

I'm inclined to agree with Pixel and Filth; I didn't find using the Gateway any easier for Kanrethad. I did use that tactic at the start but decided not to continue with it and go with Sacrifice Pact & Twilight Ward on Chaos Bolt instead. I found that easier and it allowed you to put out more damage. I'm more concered about heroic bosses and arenas.

While I agree 15 seconds is kinda short, I think the cooldown should be 30-45 seconds, not one minute.

Wait, wait wait...sixty seconds lasting debuff means that those using the portal will be immune to aggro for its entire duration, then, or will it be split into two debuffs? (As in, one to wipe aggro and another for further gateway jumping)

If the debuff is still one for both aggro purposes and travel purposes, it may actually offer several hidden advantages in a raid setting. A full minute of no aggro generation coupled with sheer impossibility for adds to prefer you over anything else.

Of course, this also means that tanks can no longer use gateways, which is a shame for fights like Iron Qon.

I didn't use gateway when I got green fire either so I'm not sure what the fuss is about. I had no aggro issues because I soul shattered right before the dogs came out the first time (while hiding him in the corner) and then on cd from then on. From that point PL was tanking him the rest of the fight and he'd never cast CB on me anymore. I used portal to LOS the CB until that first soul shatter only when I couldn't dispel the damage buff off him before he cast it or if I didn't have def cds up to take it. LOSing him constantly takes away a lot of dps uptime.

People will adapt and be able to continue to kill him without gateway, I'm certain of it.